who were fortunate enough to be of importance, and recalling what her
secret tremor before them had been, Emily was very nice indeed to little
Mrs. Osborn. She knew from experience things which would be of use to
her--things about lodgings and things about shops. Osborn had taken
lodgings in Duke Street, and Emily knew the quarter thoroughly.
Walderhurst watched her being nice, through his fixed eyeglass, and he
decided that she had really a very good manner. Its goodness consisted
largely in its directness. While she never brought forth unnecessarily
recollections of the days when she had done other people's shopping and
had purchased for herself articles at sales marked 11-3/4_d_, she was
interestingly free from any embarrassment in connection with the facts.
Walderhurst, who had been much bored by himself and other people in time
past, actually found that it gave a fillip to existence to look on at a
woman who, having been one of the hardest worked of the genteel
labouring classes, was adapting herself to the role of marchioness by
the simplest of processes, and making a very nice figure at it too, in
her entirely unbrilliant way. If she had been an immensely clever woman,
there would have been nothing special in it. She was not clever at all,
yet Walderhurst had seen her produce effects such as a clever woman
might have laboured for and only attained by a stroke of genius. As, for
instance, when she had met for the first time after her engagement, a
certain particularly detestable woman of rank, to whom her relation to
Walderhurst was peculiarly bitter. The Duchess of Merwold had counted
the Marquis as her own, considering him fitted by nature to be the
spouse of her eldest girl, a fine young woman with projecting teeth, who
had hung fire. She felt Emily Fox-Seton's incomprehensible success to be
a piece of impudent presumption, and she had no reason to restrain the
expression of her sentiments so long as she conveyed them by methods of
inference and inclusion.
"You must let me congratulate you very warmly, Miss Fox-Seton," she
said, pressing her hand with maternal patronage. "Your life has changed
greatly since we last saw each other."
"Very greatly indeed," Emily flushed frankly in innocent gratitude as
she answered. "You are very kind. Thank you, thank you."
"Yes, a great change." Walderhurst saw that her smile was feline and
asked himself what the woman was going to say next. "The last time we
met you called to ask me about the shopping you were to do for me. Do
you remember? Stockings and gloves, I think."
Walderhurst observed that she expected Emily to turn red and show
herself at a loss before the difficulties of the situation. He was on
the point of cutting into the conversation and disposing of the matter
himself when he realised that Emily was neither gaining colour nor
losing it, but was looking honestly into her Grace's eyes with just a
touch of ingenuous regret.
"It was stockings," she said. "There were some marked down to one and
elevenpence halfpenny at Barratt's. They were really _quite_ good for
the price. And you wanted four pairs. And when I got there they were all
gone, and those at two and three were not the least bit better. I was so
disappointed. It was too bad!"
Walderhurst fixed his monocle firmly to conceal the fact that he was
verging upon a cynical grin. The woman was known to be the stingiest of
small great persons in London, her economies were noted, and this
incident was even better than many others society had already rejoiced
over. The picture raised in the minds of the hearers of her Grace foiled
in the purchase of stockings marked down to 1_s_. 11-1/2_d_. would be a
source of rapture for some time to come. And Emily's face! The regretful
kindness of it, the retrospective sympathy and candid feeling! It was
incredibly good!
"And she did it quite by accident!" he repeated to himself in his inward
glee. "She did it quite by accident! She's not clever enough to have
done it on purpose. What a brilliantly witty creature she would be if
she had invented it!"
As she had been able unreluctantly to recall her past upon this
occasion, so she was able to draw for Mrs. Osborn's benefit from the
experience it had afforded her. She wanted to make up to her, in such
ways as she could, for the ill turn she had inadvertently done her. As
she had at once ranged herself as an aid on the side of Lady Agatha, so
she ranged herself entirely without obtrusiveness on the side of the
Osborns.
"It's true that she's a good sort," Hester said when they went away.
"Her days of being hard up are not far enough away to be forgotten. She
hasn't any affectation, at any rate. It makes it easier to stand her."
"She looks like a strong woman," said Osborn. "Walderhurst got a good
deal for his money. She'll make a strapping British matron."
Hester winced and a dusky red shot up in her cheek. "So she will," she
sighed.
It was quite true, and the truer it was the worse for people who
despairingly hung on and were foolish enough to hope against hope.
Chapter Eight
The marriage of Lady Agatha came first, and was a sort of pageant. The
female writers for fashion papers lived upon it for weeks before it
occurred and for some time after. There were numberless things to be
written about it. Each flower of the garden of girls was to be
described, with her bridesmaid's dress, and the exquisite skin and eyes
and hair which would stamp her as the beauty of her season when she came
out. There yet remained five beauties in Lady Claraway's possession, and
the fifth was a baby thing of six, who ravished all beholders as she
toddled into church carrying her sister's train, aided by a little boy
page in white velvet and point lace.
The wedding was the most radiant of the year. It was indeed a fairy
pageant, of youth and beauty, and happiness and hope.
One of the most interesting features of the occasion was the presence of
the future Marchioness of Walderhurst, "the beautiful Miss Fox-Seton."
The fashion papers were very strenuous on the subject of Emily's beauty.
One of them mentioned that the height and pose of her majestic figure
and the cut of her profile suggested the Venus of Milo. Jane Cupp cut
out every paragraph she could find and, after reading them aloud to her
young man, sent them in a large envelope to Chichester. Emily,
faithfully endeavouring to adjust herself to the demands of her
approaching magnificence, was several times alarmed by descriptions of
her charms and accomplishments which she came upon accidentally in the
course of her reading of various periodicals.
The Walderhurst wedding was dignified and distinguished, but not
radiant. The emotions Emily passed through during the day--from her
awakening almost at dawn to the silence of her bedroom at South Audley
Street, until evening closed in upon her sitting in the private parlour
of an hotel in the company of the Marquis of Walderhurst--it would
require too many pages to describe.
Her first realisation of the day brought with it the physical
consciousness that her heart was thumping--steadily thumping, which is
quite a different matter from the ordinary beating--at the realisation
of what had come at last. An event which a year ago the wildest dream
could not have depicted for her was to-day an actual fact; a fortune
such as she would have thought of with awe if it had befallen another
woman, had befallen her unpretending self. She passed her hand over her
forehead and gasped as she thought of it.
"I hope I shall be able to get accustomed to it and not be a--a
disappointment," she said. "Oh!" with a great rising wave of a blush,
"how good of him! How can I _ever_--"
She lived through the events of the day in a sort of dream within a
dream. When Jane Cupp brought her tea, she found herself involuntarily
making a mental effort to try to look as if she was really awake. Jane,
who was an emotional creature, was inwardly so shaken by her feelings
that she herself had stood outside the door a few moments biting her
lips to keep them from trembling, before she dared entirely trust
herself to come in. Her hand was far from steady as she set down the
tray.
"Good morning, Jane," Emily said, by way of trying the sound of her
voice.
"Good morning, miss," Jane answered. "It's a beautiful morning, miss. I
hope--you are very well?"
And then the day had begun.
Afterwards it marched on with solemn thrill and stately movement through
hours of wondrous preparation for an imposing function, through the
splendid gravity of the function itself, accompanied by brilliant crowds
collected and looking on in a fashionable church, and motley crowds
collected to look on outside the edifice, the latter pushing and
jostling each other and commenting in more or less respectful if excited
undertones, but throughout devouring with awe-struck or envious eyes.
Great people whom Emily had only known through the frequent mention of
their names in newspapers or through their relationship or intimacy with
her patrons, came to congratulate her in her rôle of bride. She seemed
to be for hours the centre of a surging, changing crowd, and her one
thought was to bear herself with an outward semblance of composure. No
one but herself could know that she was saying internally over and over
again, to steady herself, making it all seem real, "I am being married.
This is my wedding. I am Emily Fox-Seton being married to the Marquis of
Walderhurst. For his sake I must not look stupid or excited. I am not in
a dream."
How often she said this after the ceremony was over and they returned to
South Audley Street, for the wedding breakfast could scarcely be
computed. When Lord Walderhurst helped her from the carriage and she
stepped on to the strip of red carpet and saw the crowd on each side of
it and the coachman and footmen with their big white wedding favours and
the line of other equipages coming up, her head whirled.
"That's the Marchioness," a young woman with a bandbox exclaimed,
nudging her companion. "That's 'er! Looks a bit pale, doesn't she?"
"But, oh Gawd! look at them di-monds an' pearls--jess look at 'em!"
cried the other. "Wish it was me."
The breakfast seemed splendid and glittering and long; people seemed
splendid and glittering and far off; and by the time Emily went to
change her bridal magnificence for her travelling costume she had borne
as much strain as she was equal to. She was devoutly grateful for the
relief of finding herself alone in her bedroom with Jane Cupp.
"Jane," she said, "you know exactly how many minutes I can dress in and
just when I must get into the carriage. Can you give me five minutes to
lie down quite flat and dab my forehead with eau de cologne? Five
minutes, Jane. But be quite sure."
"Yes, miss--I do beg pardon--my lady. You can have five--safe."
She took no more,--Jane went into the dressing-room and stood near its
door, holding the watch in her hand,--but even five minutes did her
good.
She felt less delirious when she descended the stairs and passed through
the crowds again on Lord Walderhurst's arm. She seemed to walk through a
garden in resplendent bloom. Then there were the red carpet once more,
and the street people, and the crowd of carriages and liveries, and big,
white favours.
Inside the carriage, and moving away to the echo of the street people's
cheer, she tried to turn and look at Lord Walderhurst with an unalarmed,
if faint, smile.
"Well," he said, with the originality which marked him, "it is really
over!"
"Yes," Emily agreed with him. "And I never can forget Lady Maria's
goodness."
Walderhurst gazed at her with a dawning inquiry in his mind. He himself
did not know what the inquiry was. But it was something a trifle
stimulating. It had something to do with the way in which she had
carried herself throughout the whole thing. Really few women could have
done it as well. The pale violet of her travelling costume which was
touched with sable was becoming to her fine, straight figure. And at the
moment her eyes rested on his with the suggestion of trustful appeal.
Despite the inelasticity of his mind, he vaguely realised his bridegroom
honours.
"I can begin now," he said with stiff lightness, if such a paradox can
be, "to address you as the man in Esmond addressed his wife. I can call
you 'my lady.'"
"Oh!" she said, still trying to smile, but quivering.
"You look very nice," he said. "Upon my word you do."
And kissed her trembling honest mouth almost as if he had been a
man--not quite--but almost.
Chapter Nine
They began the new life at Palstrey Manor, which was ancient and most
beautiful. Nothing Walderhurst owned was as perfect an example of olden
time beauty, and as wonderful for that reason. Emily almost wept before
the loveliness of it, though it would not have been possible for her to
explain or particularise the grounds for her emotion. She knew nothing
whatever of the venerable wonders of the architecture. To her the place
looked like an immense, low-built, rambling fairy palace--the palace of
some sleeping beauty during whose hundred years of slumber rich
dark-green creepers had climbed and overgrown its walls and towers,
enfolding and festooning them with leaves and tendrils and actual
branches. The huge park held an enchanted forest of trees; the long
avenue of giant limes, their writhen limbs arching and interlocking,
their writhen roots deep in velvet moss, was an approach suited to a
fairy story.
* * * * *
During her first month at Palstrey Emily went about still in her dream.
It became more a dream every day. The old house was part of it, the
endless rooms, the wonderful corridors, the gardens with their
revelations of winding walks, labyrinths of evergreens, and grass paths
leading into beautiful unexpected places, where one suddenly came upon
deep, clear pools where water plants grew and slow carp had dreamed
centuries away. The gardens caused Emily to disbelieve in the existence
of Mortimer Street, but the house at times caused her to disbelieve in
herself. The picture gallery especially had this effect upon her. The
men and women, once as alive as her everyday self, now gazing down at
her from their picture frames sometimes made her heart beat as if she
stood in the presence of things eerie. Their strange, rich, ugly, or
beautiful garments, their stolid or fervid, ugly or beautiful, faces,
seemed to demand something of her; at least she had just enough
imagination to feel somewhat as if they did. Walderhurst was very kind
to her, but she was afraid she might bore him by the exceeding ignorance
of her questions about people whom he had known from his childhood as
his own kith and kin. It was not unlikely that one might have become so
familiar with a man in armour or a woman in a farthingale that questions
connected with them might seem silly. Persons whose ancestors had always
gazed intimately at them from walls might not unnaturally forget that
there were other people to whom they might wear only the far-away aspect
of numbers in catalogues of the Academy, or exhibitions of that order.
There was a very interesting catalogue of the Palstrey pictures, and
Emily found and studied it with deep interest. She cherished a touching
secret desire to know what might be discoverable concerning the women
who had been Marchionesses of Walderhurst before. None of them but
herself, she gathered, had come to their husbands from bed-sitting rooms
in obscure streets. There had been noble Hyrsts in the reign of Henry
I., and the period since then elapsed had afforded time for numerous
bridals. Lady Walderhurst was overcome at moments by her reflections
upon what lay behind and before her, but not being a complex person or
of fervid imagination, she was spared by nature the fevers of complex
emotions.
In fact, after a few weeks had passed she came out of her dream and
found her happiness enduring and endurable. Each day's awakening was a
delight to her, and would probably be so to the end of her existence,
absolutely because she was so sane and uncomplex a creature. To be
deftly assisted in her dressing by Jane Cupp, and to know that each
morning she might be fittingly and becomingly attired without anxiety as
to where her next gown was to come from, was a lovely thing. To enjoy
the silent, perfect workings of the great household, to drive herself or
be driven, to walk and read, to loiter through walled gardens and
hothouses at will,--such things to a healthy woman with an unobscured
power of enjoyment were luxuries which could not pall.
Walderhurst found her an actual addition to his comfort. She was never in
the way. She seemed to have discovered the trick of coming and going
undisturbingly. She was docile and affectionate, but not in the least
sentimental. He had known men whose first years of marriage, not to
speak of the first months, had been rendered unbearable by the fact that
their wives were constantly demanding or expecting the expression of
sentiments which unsentimental males had not at their fingers' ends. So
the men had been annoyed or bored, and the women had been dissatisfied.
Emily demanded nothing of the sort, and was certainly not dissatisfied.
She looked very handsome and happy. Her looks positively improved, and
when people began to call and she to pay visits, she was very much
liked. He had certainly been quite right in deciding to ask her to marry
him. If she had a son, he should congratulate himself greatly. The more
he saw of Osborn the more he disliked him. It appeared that there was a
prospect of a child there.
This last was indeed true, and Emily had been much touched and awakened
to sympathy. It had gradually become revealed to her that the Osborns
were poorer than they could decently admit. Emily had discovered that
they could not even remain in the lodgings in Duke Street, though she
did not know the reason, which was that Captain Osborn had been obliged
to pay certain moneys to stave off a scandal not entirely unconnected
with the young woman his arm had encircled the day Walderhurst had seen
him on the top of the bus. He was very well aware that if he was to
obtain anything from Lord Walderhurst, there were several things which
must be kept entirely dark. Even a scandal belonging to the past could
be made as unpleasant as an error of to-day. Also the young woman of the
bead cape knew how to manage him. But they must remove to cheaper
lodgings, and the rooms in Duke Street had been far from desirable.
Lady Walderhurst came in one morning from a walk, with a fresh colour
and bright eyes, and before taking off her hat went to her husband's
study.
"May I come in?"
Walderhurst had been writing some uninteresting letters and looked up
with a smile.
"Certainly," he answered. "What a colour you have! Exercise agrees with
you. You ought to ride."
"That was what Captain Osborn said. If you don't mind, I should like to
ask you something."
"I don't mind. You are a reasonable woman, Emily. One's safe with you."
"It is something connected with the Osborns."
"Indeed!" chilling slightly. "I don't care about them, you know."
"You don't dislike her, do you?"
"No-o, not exactly."
"She's--the truth is, she is not at all well," with a trifle of
hesitance; "she ought to be better taken care of than she is in
lodgings, and they are obliged to take very cheap ones."
"If he had been a more respectable fellow his circumstances would have
been different," rather stiffly.
Emily felt alarmed. She had not dreamed of the temerity of any remark
suggestive of criticism.
"Yes," hastily, "of course. I am sure you know best; but--I thought
perhaps--"
Walderhurst liked her timidity. To see a fine, tall, upstanding creature
colour in that way was not disagreeable when one realised that she
coloured because she feared she might offend one.
"What did you think 'perhaps'?" was his lenient response.
Her colour grew warmer, but this time from a sense of relief, because he
was evidently not as displeased as he might have been.
"I took a long walk this morning," she said. "I went through the High
Wood and came out by the place called The Kennel Farm. I was thinking a
good deal of poor Mrs. Osborn because I had heard from her this morning,
and she seemed so unhappy. I was looking at her letter again when I
turned into the lane leading to the house. Then I saw that no one was
living there, and I could not help going in to look--it is such a
delightful old building, with its queer windows and chimneys, and the
ivy which seems never to have been clipped. The house is so roomy and
comfortable--I peeped in at windows and saw big fireplaces with benches
inside them. It seems a pity that such a place should not be lived in
and--well, I thought how _kind_ it would be of you to lend it to the
Osborns while they are in England."
"It would indeed be kind," remarked his lordship, without fervour.
Her momentary excitement led Emily to take the liberty of putting out
her hand to touch his. She always felt as if connubial familiarities
were rather a liberty; at least she had not, so far, been able to
overcome a feeling rather of that order. And this was another thing
Walderhurst by no means disliked. He himself was not aware that he was a
man with a good deal of internal vanity which enjoyed soothing food. In
fact, he had not a sufficiently large brain to know very much about
himself or to be able to analyse his reasons for liking or disliking
people or things. He thought he knew his reasons for his likes and
dislikes, but he was frequently very far away from the clear, impersonal
truth about them. Only the brilliant logic and sensitiveness of genius
really approaches knowledge of itself, and as a result it is usually
extremely unhappy. Walderhurst was never unhappy. He was sometimes
dissatisfied or annoyed, but that was as far as his emotions went.
Being pleased by the warm touch of Emily's hand, he patted her wrist and
looked agreeably marital.
"The place was built originally for a family huntsman, and the pack was
kept there. That is why it is called The Kennel Farm. When the last
lease fell out it remained unlet because I don't care for an ordinary
tenant. It's the kind of house that is becoming rare, and the bumpkin
farmer and his family don't value antiquities."
"If it were furnished as it _could_ be furnished," said Emily, "it would
be _beautiful_. One _can_ get old things in London if one can afford
them. I've seen them when I've been shopping. They are not cheap, but
you can get them if you really search."
"Would you like to furnish it?" Walderhurst inquired. The consciousness
that he could, if he chose, do the utmost thing of its kind in this way,
at the moment assumed a certain proportion of interest to him under the
stimulation of the wonder and delight which leaped into Emily's eyes as
the possibility confronted her. Having been born without imagination,
his wealth had not done for him anything out of the ordinary every-day
order.
"Would I _like_ to do it? Oh, _dear_!" she exclaimed. "Why, in all my
life I have never _dreamed_ of being able to do such things."
That, of course, was true, he reflected, and the fact added to his
appreciation of the moment. There were, of course, many people to whom
it would be impossible to contemplate the spending of a sum of money of
any importance in the indulgence of a wish founded on mere taste. He had
not thought of the thing particularly in detail before, and now that he
realised the significance of the fact as a fact, Emily had afforded him
a new sensation.
"You may do it now, if you wish," he said. "I once went over the place
with an architect, and he said the whole thing could be made comfortable
and the atmosphere of the period wholly retained for about a thousand
pounds. It is not really dilapidated and it is worth saving. The gables
and chimneys are very fine. I will attend to that, and you can do the
rest in your own way."
"It may take a good deal of money to buy the old things," gasped Emily.
"They are not cheap in these days. People have found out that they are
wanted."
"It won't cost twenty thousand pounds," Walderhurst answered. "It is a
farm-house after all, and you are a practical woman. Restore it. You
have my permission."